The subject matter herein relates generally to chocolate, and more particularly, to chocolate having cholecalciferol.
Many people do not receive their necessary dietary requirements through diet alone. In particular, many people do not eat foods that contain their dietary requirements because the food is not available to them, the food is too expensive, and/or the individual does not like the taste of the healthy food. Given these shortcomings, there is a need to supply essential nutrients through dietary supplements and fortified food products. Chocolate represents a desirable food base that is pleasing, inexpensive, readily available, and amenable to receive supplementation of nutrients.
However, conventional chocolates are not without their disadvantages. In particular, many dietary supplements may not be easily mixed into chocolate. For example, when trying to mix some dietary supplements with chocolate, the mixture becomes lumpy and of uneven distribution. In addition, such additions may lead to detrimental effects on chocolate tempering, which is critical to the organoleptic properties and stability of the food. Accordingly, the chocolate becomes unusable in terms of both palatability and shelf-life stability.
Additionally, despite several advances in providing chocolates with dietary supplements, vitamins such as cholecalciferol are not available in chocolate in the higher doses being recommended by recent medical guidelines. Additionally, known chocolates do not provide dietary supplements such as probiotics and lutein in combination with cholecalciferol.
A need remains for a chocolate that provides at least one of cholecalciferol, lutein, and/or probiotics in a clinically useful dose. Moreover, a need remains for a method to mix these dietary supplements evenly within chocolate at clinically meaningful doses while preserving the desirable organoleptic properties of the chocolate itself.